How To Generate/Instigate Community
Invite 4 people over for a potluck and movie; I recommend Branagh’s Belfast. Do a regular Zoom with 2 or 3 of your best SLU friends, say every quarter, with or without certain topics, questions…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
A Classic Is a Book That Has Never Finished Saying What It Has to Say
The moral compass of Les Misérables thus spreads far beyond the history, geography, politics and economics of the world in which its story is set. The novel achieves the extraordinary feat of being at the…
Paradise and Inferno
The World War I poet Ivor Gurney wrote: “There are strange Hells within the minds War made.” If a new Vietnam War poem is ever written in America, it will be a descent into that…
Bucket List/1
To love my enemies To be here now To smile at every child I meet To travel in my mind’s eye to Rafah, Gaza and remember the beauty of the people To encourage 237 more…
Dear Barista
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s movie, Stardust Memories, where Martians come to earth, and Woody Allen’s character, Sandy Bates, seeks their wisdom about the meaning of life, and he has this exchange with them:…
Dear Anya
Thank you for your cool list of queries which I saw after I got back from vacation at Blue-Eye, Missouri! I will start with an easy one: “Favorite Book”— The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevskyas translated by…
Bodhisattva/Neurotic
Allen wanted to see everything, do everything, and meet everyone. 267 Bill Morgan, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg Recently, I have read biographies of Goethe and Proust. Today I finished…
Scoffers and Seers
“They all laughed at him. Particularly a lieutenant-colonel….’I am a lieutenant-colonel,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never met any God in all my life. Where is He, your Christ? Has anyone ever seen Him?’ ‘I have,’…
He Won’t Be Swayed
“And so I am practically compelled to follow that path, and I shall keep to it in spite of all the world. It is useless for you to wear yourselves out trying to persuade me…
Get to Work
Work on reducing your likes and dislikes, not only in personal relationships but in everything….Try this with jobs and responsibilities: the nagging little things you have to do but just don’t want to. It’s…